A security researcher has released a proof-of-concept program that hackers could use to exploit Windows Vista digital rights management processes to hide malware. Alex Ionescu claims to have developed the program - D-Pin Purr v1.0 - that will arbitrarily enable and disable protected processes in Vista, Microsoft's latest operating system.

There will come a time when Vista's own 'features' are so good at protecting the wrong doers and so bad at protecting the actual user, (such as is DRM) that getting a piece of malware will be a re-install job instead of just running a scan. That's when the en-mass migrations will begin.

To a lesser or greater degree, it's already been like that for a few years.

On a side note, last weekend I was out laptop shopping with the girlfriend (for the girlfriend) and she had a budget of just £400. For that price you can get a reasonable system (and one that's more than capable for her needs) but every system had Vista pre-installed. I kept asking the shop-keepers if there was any way I can ditch Vista (as even the pricer systems in her budget only just met Vista minimum requirements) and install XP or Linux and they simply said it would be breaking the warrenty to install anything other than what was supplied. Very frustraiting (given that the laptop barely runs the OS even with Aero turned off)